How to read more books(scotto.me) |
How to read more books(scotto.me) |
One could make the same fallacious "form affects content" argument against books, but in reality authors rarely write stories for people randomly flipping pages, at most the author will tell them or explain why they might want to turn to a particular page. Similarly most content on the web doesn't assume you are jumping to links and coming back, but instead uses them as an index of references.
There are style problems of course, too much surface area, over-reliance on and under-appreciation of sources. There is nothing pure about text. Any form requires training on the part of the consumer to appreciate the "depth". From what I can see people don't care about the content, they don't even care about comparing the trade-offs from one form to another beyond format prestige and convenience.
Please look at how books actually make money rather than assuming a priori that they optimize for "lifetime value" instead of some platonic ideal book that exists in your head. Now if you're more adept at a particular medium due to practice that's a valid reason to stick with it, but it's not one to spread vile propaganda about a medium and convince its consumers to turn off their brains because the medium's difficulty matrix applied to thought patterns is different.
If you disagree, fine, feel free to write software like this [1] and pray that the problem doesn't naturally require indirection. Code is just another medium, yes the inclusion of abstractions is poison for deep thought, but not every problem is best solved by deep thought. "Study long, study wrong."
I'm not necessarily disagreeing. But I also want to think critically about why I read books. I don't want to read books just so I can tell people I read lots of books.
I've concluded that I read for entertainment, to understand other people, and for community - to have something in common with other readers of that book. Three recent books:
The most recent book I read was Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett. Very much in the entertainment category, but also for community: it's nice to have something in common, shared reference points, something to talk about with all the nice people loving these books, including family.
Then a book Norwegian book called "Men who hate local history", which I bought because I was traveling alone with limited other entertainment, and had heard about it and wanted to know what it was about (understanding people). But its entertainment value was questionable, and by god, it has more "serious Norwegian literature" clichés than "genre books" (what these authors absolutely do not want to get associated with) have "genre clichés". It IS a genre, just not a very entertaining one. Put it down, unsure if I will finish this one.
I tried to read Stefan Zweig, "The world of yesterday". That was strictly "understanding people". "Famous Jewish playwrights of the final days Austro-Hungarian empire" are not people I would think I have much in common with, and I don't, and it at times makes it downright alienating reading. Like, I can see he was absolutely starstruck by the art and culture of his time and place, and I can see that this time and place was hugely influential and had profound impacts on our world today (I've seen it claimed you could theoretically meet Hitler, Stalin, Tito, Trotsky etc. on the street in Vienna in these years, as well as Freud and all the art world celebrities Zweig obsessed over). But I just can't say I feel that sense of wonder myself and man, is it bleak reading. I put it down indefinitely.
- Regarding "The World of Yesterday", I should say that it was one of the most impressive books I have ever read. I still often remember particular passages and the emotions they evoked. There is also a certain irony in your saying that you cannot relate to it, because part of what makes the book so fascinating is that it describes a time that is chronologically quite close to our own, yet also profoundly different, beautiful, and completely gone. My two cents: please give it another try!
About "The World of Yesterday", I can only say that e.g. Zweig speaking about how he was moved to tears by some piece of art feels a bit alienating, when the art has no such effect on me. What you say
> it describes a time that is chronologically quite close to our own, yet also profoundly different, beautiful, and completely gone.
IS why I find the book interesting, there's just an asterisk by "beautiful" for me, since clearly Zweig thought it a lot more beautiful than I do. I can't feel what he's feeling just from him describing it, since recent as it may be, his background was completely different from my own in most ways I can think of. I do think it's likely I'll pick it up again, but I can't relate well to it on a personal level.
I want to add one thing : Reading for the right purpose is more important than just reading as fast as possible.
https://world.hey.com/otar/remembering-what-you-read-8b70cf6...
Not only read book, but also thinking them is a must thing.
Sometime you want to go outside from your home to see the real world.
Don't forget the real world, reading book lets you absorb the knowledge, but most time they are not right， accurate, or you don't understand them, the real world can tell you the real knowledge.
sometime for books that I choose I nred something like a table and chair pen a paper to really read the text that written
What nonsense. I doubled my number of books by using audiobooks. Audiobooks slow you down as well, so you can enjoy fiction at a slower pace since x3 is the fastest you can go (plus silence trimming for extra speedup). Even at slower speed I more than doubled the number because of how much dead time exists in our lives.
Maybe if you are rich, have servants and can spend any amount of time you want reading then you can stick to paper.
2. Point face at page.
3. Wait.
4. Turn page.
5. When last page, close book.
6. Acquire new book.
7. Repeat.
Come on now, what is this Monty Python?
I mean, I would love to read more books (and I have a very long backlog), but very rarely I find them stimulating enough to sustain attention. And if they do... well, then time flies and other commitments are missed.
Sure, everyone's ADHD is different and I know quite a lot of people, for whom book are go-to. For me there is a narrow bar between not enough stimulated to start, and too stimulated so in my own words of a thousand thoughts.
- Why to read?
- How to read (from a literary / skills perspective)?
- What to read: authors, topics, books, etc?
- How to read (practice / technology)?
Mortimer Adler's How to Read a Book addresses most of the first three questions, and ... would be a good book to read itself. For an overview of it:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Read_a_Book> (Wikipedia)
<https://archive.org/details/howtoreadabook1940edition/page/n...> (Fully online copy, 1940 edition).
Adler starts of with the whys: entertainment, information, understanding, and syntopical (mastery). I'd add to his list reading for reading, whether that's to build the habit itself, or to increase your own skills in your first or additional languages. To which I'd only add: understand why you want to read, or are reading, and if you wish to remain with that motivation or seek others.
In how he discusses the different types and levels of reading, from skimming to deep analysis. These both suit different goals (whys), and demand very different levels of intention and attention.
For both these sections I'd strongly recommend you read Adler's own discussion, though there's a good overview in a Farnham Street blog post on the book: <https://fs.blog/how-to-read-a-book/> (itself discussed briefly at HN <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26450303>).
As to what to read, beyond the extent to which that's addressed in the "why" and "how" discussion, Adler includes a list of 300 or so significant works which would make a good starting ground for general background.
For myself, I've used various sets of recommendations, including literary awards and recommendations at websites, as well as starting with a question, looking for books on those topics, and then heavily mining bibliographies and citations (the former: works cited by what I'm reading, the latter citations of the work I've read) for further exploration. Past a point, finding material worth reading actually does become a challenge, despite the tremendous volume of published works (hundreds of thousands to a million or more books through much of the 20th century and beyond).
On how to read: I'm fond of physical books, but a bookreader (e-ink if possible) is an excellent way to carry a large (thousands or more volumes) of books, and audiobooks are quite accessible. I've had mixed experiences with Onyx BOOX --- the displays are wonderful, but as with most e-book readers on device organisation of a large library is ... poorly supported. Physical device reliability and support through the vendor have been more recent frustrations. And I'm increasingly not a fan of Android in any form (the BOOX devices run a de-Googled Android). I'm not aware of anything markedly better, unfortunately. I would recommend the largest device you can comfortably carry, with 8--10" probably being the sweet spot. Smaller devices are more portable, but really don't support written material particularly well.
For audiobooks, Librivox (https://librivox.org/), public library apps such as Libby and Hoopla, and government-supported programmes such as the US Library of Congress National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled (NLS/BARD: <https://www.loc.gov/nls/> and <https://www.loc.gov/nls/services-and-resources/catalog-and-b...>) are all excellent options. The NLS/BARD service is free to qualified individuals, and includes not only over 300,000 audiobook titles (plus Braille), but free apps (iOS, Android) and physical e-book readers. If you or someone you know has visual or reading disabilities, and you live in the US or a territory, do check it out. A medical professional (doctor, optometrist, nurse, or other) can provide an eligibility statement. See <https://www.loc.gov/nls/services-and-resources/catalog-and-b...>.
Upshot: figure out why you want to read and what. Adler's a good source on the how (there are other guides, including similarly titled ones). Books are all over, in meatspace, libraries, online, etc. Figure out how you prefer to (or need to) read. And then just get into it.
Where does that point arrive? I'm right now at a point where my to read list is increasing faster than I can read, because I keep adding books mentioned in the other books I''m reading.
For someone reading for distraction, with narrow interests and tastes, who's covered most of the obvious canon (Great Books, literary prizes/awards, etc.), coming up with useful recommendations gets challenging.
Mind: I'm describing others, not myself, for whom the situation is similar to what you describe. I am getting better at realising that many of the works I'm referred to by the means mentioned earlier (references and citations) aren't especially illuminating, though at least for now, many others are. More books than time is still my status.
The problem as stated derives largely from what I've heard of trying to keep a very literary visually-disabled person with refined and/or narrow tastes "in books". A few thousand titles in, and much of the low-hanging fruit is harvested, and recommendations (friends, book reviews, AI/LLM) tend to either replicate books already read or come up with inappropriate / unsatisfactory recommendations.
If you've covered most of the obvious canon, then that person has read a lot and must have developed their tastes and curiosity into new paths, where there again is an endless variety. Unless there's a more urgent need for real life living instead of books.
Simply listening to an audiobook while driving to work let me "read" a lot more than I thought it would. At the time, my commute was only 10 minutes, but I still managed to read a book per month and listen to my favorite podcasts!
Definitely would not recommend higher speed for fiction, though. For fiction, you're listening to a performance. It'd be akin to watching a movie at 2x.
I can regularly work in noisy places. I can even routinely sleep in such places. At least after adjusting for a while, or when I am too tired, or travelling. But I cannot routinely read if the place isn't calm and doesn't feel cosy. I say "routinely" because when I am travelling, I can read just fine even at the bus and train stations (both are mad noisy where I live) - the brain somehow knows or adjusts. But I just can't in a house that is near a traffic hell, or above a noisy market. I just can't read there. That's one of the reasons I my house hunts become so daunting and stressful in this godforsaken city where "older bachelors" are double-whammied.
Train journeys are very productive for my reading and sleeping.
And as the author notes, abandoning books helped my reading. Though most often I don't truly dump them - I skip-read them, I speed-read them, if I am sure I may never pick them again. Then there are books that I may find they are not worth "my" time (might be great books to others), I don't even bother to speed/skip read them. I just let go of them.
One thing I learned is often when you are excited about those easy books, voracious readers are quick to tell you how much the book sucks. "Read this by an obscure author instead". Ignore that until you have read a whole lot of books in your list.
I think practical tips for someone already a frequent reader are probably different that for someone who reads 'a bit', a few a year at most. I'd be very happy if I got to 10/year consistently. But that would a) be more than 5.2x-ing; b) be a harder initial curve than the 10 to 52 region, I imagine.
I listen them in the gym between sets, I listen them in the car, in the plane, in taxi, doing chores at home and in any other place where you cannot do more useful things, and you cannot read as well.
Five minutes here, ten there and it adds quite fast.
[1] I cannot consume every book as audiobook, some are so dense in material, that it requires actual reading.
[2]Not every book exists as audio book and not every book has a good narrator, which is quite important.
but:
[1] Quite often, you can listen them in parallel to other activities. [2] When you are driving with someone, listening audiobook together adds plenty of interesting topics to discussions after the drive + bonding experience (you are doing something together, you are focussing on the same thing together) [3] You can listen with various speeds, and for me, so far it went up to 1.5x on some books, which speeds up the process.
--- I do not have a problem to find books to read or listen as author of the post. My "To Read" list grows much faster than the information I consume.
I'm always in front of my PC both at work and off the clock. I could set up a proxy/filtering software to block them, but the thing is I need to access them at work as well.
Another thing is, when I "waste" time with websites like HN, sometime I learn something new like this post. Maybe much less often than what books would teach me though.
I found myself reading a LOT more (mostly via the Kindle app on my phone).
It actually inspired me to get an actual Kindle which does help cut down on the "let me flip to social media" when reading.
My wife and oldest son can read books in a few hours. My son (17) has read Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. I'm a slow reader. I take forever, find it hard to focus, and often my thoughts distract me from the words on the page.
My youngest son (11) has dyslexia and barely reads. I used to read for him before going to bed, but eventually stopped because I figured he was old enough to read by himself, but he doesn't. So I started again. Now I'm reading Lord of the Rings to him before bedtime. The ritual helps us get through it at a steady pace, but I'm still terribly slow at reading my own books.
I get through about 2 books per month this way. I haven't noticed eye strain issues, but I tend to keep the brightness low and the font size reasonable. If you struggle with eye strain, you might benefit from an e-book phone case (e.g., https://www.inkcase.com/inkcase-for-iphone/) if you don't want to carry a separate device.
Really sad modern phones don't allow to set app's budget for custom interval, like 5 minutes in an hour.
You could try ScreenZen or a similar app that help control nd reduce the time you spend on certain apps.
Nowadays, you can such apps in a few prompts and some minor tweaks :)
Reading in public transport has helped me to read more often at home too
Easy: I read 50 pages every night when I go to bed, instead of screens.
I started with short novels, 150 pages or fewer (chatgpt gave me a reading list).
It quickly became a habit, and it's lovely.
I have lots of things to do, and sometimes reading takes hours of my day that I need to give to other productive activities.
But I dedicate specific days go reading.
I've read 16 books thus far this year.
The Libby app (with Audible to fill in the blanks) makes it incredibly easy to train up your listening speed dramatically, making it possible to finish several books per week for free, while doing your morning rituals, commuting, washing the dishes.
The thing you have to absorb is that reading more does not come at the cost of doing other things, unless those other things are podcasts or recorded music.
You just have to be somewhat assertive about realizing that if you shave for 3-4 minutes, that's 1% of a novel at 2.5x speed. All of those interstitial moments in your day add up, fast.
I have probably upset two groups of people and sorry for that. I don’t want to yuck your yum, I just think the differentiation between these categories matters.
It's made me much more selective about what podcasts I listen to, since I've realized just how information-poor most of them are.
I do still enjoy a good interview, or even just the para-social pleasure of "hanging out" with hosts I like, but I'm now doing so consciously and not by default.
https://www.reddit.com/r/hermannhesse/comments/1uvcfnj/read_...
No, reading is not just about getting the idea from the author. It's an experience in and of itself, and the lack of something makes the experience just as much as the presence of something.
It's almost like saying a comic and an animation are the same thing, or that an animation is better, since it has more possibilities.
There's this tendency to treat things as if they're the same, otherwise one is inferior. But that's just not the case. Two things can be both different and valuable in their own way.
I don't know why. Maybe it's psychological. Maybe it's just ageing. Maybe it's my brain fried first by internet then by the smartphone.
I still buy more books than I read, probably unconsciously hoping that one day the flame that pushed me to devour so many books will get ablaze again
Same. I started to read significantly less once I had a PC with Internet access. Also stopped playing video games. Then, with smartphones, I stopped reading books altogether.
I searched for a good Android reader that would sync my book progress across devices but couldn't find anything that worked. So I ended up vibe coding my own app that works for me. I'd consider open sourcing it if people are interested.
The above is obviously personal. Also is only related to fiction for me. If I'm learning something I prefer a physical book everytime.
Read books you enjoy.
One thing that have made it easier for be though has been the decline of everything else. As someone pointed out, the internet isn't the internet we grew up with, TV shows mostly suck now and are all designed for binge watching which leaves me feeling physically ill. Same with e.g. YouTube, there are still creators who's content I enjoy, but the YouTube algorithm seems to force me out of a tangent and preferably into Shorts. Much of this algorithmicly pushed content makes me feel ill, so I try to steer clear of it.
So now I buy used books, most happens to be published in the 1970s for some reason. There are so many out there that I'll never run out of things to read and at €1-2 per books, it's cheap.
(Proceeds to describe how they made time for reading by removing other distractions.)
I'm trying to read more books, but I easily fall into the trap of staying up late reading good books, and I have trouble recovering from sleep deficit these days.
To me, having these blocks of times sound better than trying to read a sentence or two in the white space around other activities.
It is indeed an odd challenge to find good books because I hate to be spoiled and that limits the search options quite a bit.
Until, I realized Hacker News users sometimes recommend books in their comments, and the books are related to the topic being discussed. Also, sometimes there are submissions asking people to list their favorite books ever, favorite books read in a particular year, etc. It was a game changer.
Well said. On a related note, I think the idea of coming back to books later is essential to reading non-fiction, as I've personally found it much more productive to read until I think I've "got it", and then revisit it a few months later with a new (ideally better informed) perspective.
I do love listening to youtube talks about tech so I try to make space for that though.
When I do read a good book - I do try to makes notes of it. But I haven't had much time for it these days with a little one. (This is for non-fiction books). But even for fiction I keep a list and give a one liner of the plot and a rating. Its for my own personal use.
Writing down notes helps with later recall of the information - being handed the notes by others helps less with recall than doing it yourself.
The key is getting immersed in a book in the same way that you might get immersed in a movie or a genre of music or some other thing that gets you in a zone. Fall into the rabbit hole. Joining r/bookclub or some other online book discussion group helps me fall deep into the rabbit hole. In lieu of an online book discussion group, chatting with my/your preferred LLM is a good tactic. I recommend finishing a chapter, then going to your LLM and saying "I just finished chapter 1 of Heller's Catch 22" ... that's pretty much enough of a prompt to get it to give you a synopsis with some questions to help you reflect on what you read.
Obviously the longer I spend reading no books, the greater my success will be. Time to install TikTok to the homescreen.
Zero to One, Baby.
I really enjoy it and it's a nice reprieve especially at work.
Thanks!
- choose a time (in the evening)
1. after that time, screens become forbidden
2. read until you're sleepy
3. sleep
I recently bought a locked Xteink X4 and installed Crosspoint. It's great! (And I've been reading a lot more.)
https://github.com/crosspoint-reader/crosspoint-reader#usb-l...
P.S. Their official site, https://xteink.com, seems to sell unlocked devices.
Maybe you should take up cycling. Maybe you need to write more. Maybe you aren't eating enough fruit. Maybe you need a little caffeine. Maybe it's the air quality. We don't think it's microplastics.
Your friends who read. Maybe it's their fault. They're not printing enough. Or sending enough screenshots. Why haven't you caught them outside on street medians reading out loud? To whoever. They're not setting for you the right example.
Audio books won't cut it. Hey big guy why don't stick one a them foam feet thingies in between ya toes while ya at it huh! And cut some cucumbers to recess the bags under ya eyes so people wont mistake ya for a guy who actually reads his books and will not following the family to their trip to Monaco this summer, no, sorry Donna, I'll be here at home with the books. The dog will have to learn to fend on its own as will the plants, your niece and nephew.
Depending on the novel, there definitely can be timing in the movies.
Furthermore, there's a reason the narrator performs voice acting. It adds to the experience. Speeding it up takes some of it away.
As for watching shows at high speed ... meh. If I feel the urge to do it, it's a sign I shouldn't be watching it anyway.
> This is probably the most difficult part. I had to remove all social media and streaming apps from my iPhone. I removed Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, etc. When I started, I found myself picking up the phone and immediately noticing that something was missing, since the only things left to do were check the weather, read boring emails, or see my bank account.
These past few months, I have more resolve than ever to cut the chains. Willpower is a practice, and there have been successful steps towards the goal.
First, blocking the real sucks (X, Reddit). Then news (Canadian, won't bore you with the list). And then an innocuous yet sticky set of apps that I would bounce to often, for little benefit or reason: weather, server stats, stocks. A new wrinkle? Inane conversations with LLMs. Blocked!
HN still because, well brothers and the rare sister, it's lonely out there and this place cracks me up. And not much longer.
Now on to entire devices. Desktop, laptop, destined for a locked-down iPad. Lobotomized iPhone, got a watch, and now, slowly, more and more reading.
What pushed me over the edge is the realization that I'm in grief. The Internet which once shaped my identity today, in no defensible way, resembles the silly place which once gave me solace. And yet, like a husk I cling to the teet of these manipulative networks and websites hoping for one last, satisfying drink.
It ain't comin'. Books, then. Like my mother.
My own response has been to opt out at the hardware level: I've gone for a Mudita Kompakt e-ink phone. I haven't even bothered installing social media, the experience would be bad enough that I'd never be tempted, but what it's great for is KOReader and some light fiction. I use my Kindle for heavier fiction and non-fiction, and paper when I suspect I'll really want to engage with a book, writing all over it, referencing it heavily.
You’ll have to login each time you’ll want to access it.
If you have a password manager that allows you to login faster, just modify your password in a known way like {password_stored_in_passmanager}_IACKNOWLEDEGEIREALLYWANTTOLOGIN
If you want to keep the account but lose the access for a long time, just remove the password from your password manager, next time you’ll want to login you’ll have to use the password recovery.
ooof. I'm 56. I got an Internet email address before most people knew email existed (1987). I belonged to virtual communities on usenet and listservs well before the web as we know it took root.
Consequently, I feel your comment in my bones.
The main problem is that so many books are really just essays or papers that get stretched to 300 pages because that is what the publisher wants. A great book I don't think has this problem.
I don't see a separation though between books, LLMs, papers and audiobooks. I would add youtube lectures in there too. They are all valued friends in learning to me.
I found myself in a similar situation last year, I felt like I have no time, but I was just scrolling mindlessly on social media whenever there was some off time. As I was reading quite a lot when I was younger, I ended up maybe reading 1-2 books a year, best case scenario. Last summer somehow I wanted to try something else that would help me keep focus or disconnect, maybe for me it worked because of what I started reading. I heard 2-3 years ago on a podcast (Tim Ferris I think) about Ted Chiang and bought one of his collections, but never read it. I got so fascinated with the first book (sort stories, you could just read a story on the go, no huge time investment) and the stories that I ended up reading most all his works, that just hooked me up. A year later, I'm around 2-3 books per month, always try to alternate from fiction to non-fiction, try to mix up and probably the most important part, like in the post, whenever I feel like I don't "vibe" with the book or author, I just stop. Forcing yourself to read a book that you don't like is probably the easiest way of breaking the habit. I even stopped driving to work, the 40 minutes I get per day to read on the train are amazing, it makes me happy if there is some technical issue and the train takes 10-20 minutes longer, more time to read.
Funny, because I found the post terrible but approve of the goals technique if done temporarily. Many many years ago I set myself a reading goal (first year it was number of books; second year and beyond it was time spent reading) and that served me well to both establish the types of books which aren’t worth it and create the reading mindset. Now I read whenever, but it has become frequent and effortless.
Some of the things I found terrible advice in the post include:
> Also, Ryan Holiday — a famous author
Look, you do you, but Ryan Holiday is not a good person to take advice from. Also, being a “famous author” is not a credential for being the person to help you read more, especially if you are familiar with his history.
> Avoid summaries and summary services. (…) reading a summary does not equal reading a book.
Many many books are not worth the amount of pages they take. This includes several books popular on HN. Too many books should have been pamphlets. They take one big core idea then stretch it out over multiple chapters with self-serving examples, story after story of repeating the same bullshit. Not every book is read for pleasure, some are only worth it for the information. Find a talk on YouTube that the author has given, and you’ll get all the important points.
> Avoid even audiobooks. (…)
Look, it’s fine if audiobooks don’t work for you, and it’s fine to let your readers know why. But don’t phrase it as advice of audiobooks not working in general. You may get distracted when listening to an audiobook, you may not be able to concentrate on it, but that is definitely not true for everyone. Listening to an audiobook while cooking or cleaning can work like doodling while listening to a lecture, i.e. it helps retention, attention, and understanding.
It's _really_ hard to break the phone habit. I was in a good place for a few years but have recently been spending time on Reddit.
It's not the end of the world. Ultimately I think going back to Reddit is because I recently haven't had the patience to really read, reflect, etc.
Reading it is.
As does Goodreads and reviewing, for myself, every book I read.
Logging out of social media on phones is a good idea.
New authors however will certainly have to earn trust for a few years now I think.
It's similar with music, if someone puts out their first album in 2026 and has no singles or EPs, no YouTube presence, etc., it's probably slop. If they have a body of work that goes back a few years, easy to trust.
You should always be critical of everything you read. I have stopped reading plenty of books after a few chapters when I realized there was little value in it for me.
I finally made it all the way through The Power Broker recently, which I've wanted to read for years, and am now on Jennifer Pahlka's really insightful Recoding America, which features heavily in the chapter "Govern" in Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson's Abundance. The three are actually quite interesting to read back to back.
Audiobooks are definitely slower to get through than just reading, but I find that I can stick with them in a way that books just haven't allowed me to do in years.
I have a lot of trouble reading in noisy places, since I get distracted easily. My habit would be to put on some very minimal / low-information ambient music like Stars of the Lid and it worked well.
Then one day I randomly decided to put the audiobook on while reading and it was a revelation. After adjusting the audio rate to match my reading speed (usually between 2-3x depending on narrator / subject) it allowed me to totally lock in. Both "inputs" seem to reinforce each other. I researched and apparently people call this "immersive reading".
I find I can (just) listen to (easy) non-fiction like biographies, memoirs etc since they don't usually require much deep thought. But for fiction or harder/denser non fiction I read and listen at the same time.
I grew up reading all the time. About 20 years ago, I found myself reading less and less. I decided to read "The Count of Monte Cristo" again. I decided I would read one chapter a night, before going to bed, regardless of how late it was, how busy, etc, By the time I finished, reading before going to bed was a habit. I read 30-60 minutes every night before going to bed. (Read plenty of other times, too; but, no matter how the day has been, I read ever night.)
I don’t read in bed unless I’m on my own, or we’re both reading, as I’ve not found any satisfying book lights and I don’t use an e-reader. Also probably better for sleep hygiene and, as I get older, ergonomics to have a cosy spot somewhere else. Younger me could read folded in half, older me doesn’t want the back trouble.
Reading boring/difficult but important books is the best solution when you can't sleep. Either they're the best sleeping pill, or you're learning something important.
Mmh I’m not sure about that. I prefer to read for 1-2 hours rather than read 2 minutes here and 5 minutes there, especially for books that require some concentration to read, like dense stories and/or books not in my native language.
This is actually one of the best ways to reinforce knowledge, if that's what you're reading for. Especially if you are reading about different, but related, topics. The idea is that you do a little bit of forgetting between reading sessions of a book and then have to force some recall of where you were at when you pick up the book a few days later, which reinforces the memory of what you've read.
WRT reading multiple books on different but related topics, you're giving yourself more material to build a working mental model of something, so if you're trying to teach yourself calculus, you'll probably learn it much better when you're reading it along with, say, a book on the history of rocketry, and/or a book on astronomy. The topics reinforce and integrate nicely with one another because of the big overlap with the mental models used -- learning something in rocketry or astronomy gives you a place to tie in something you learn from calculus, for instance. They're also different enough to give your mind a break so you have to practice some recall of what you've already gone over when you pick up your calculus book again.
Also from personal experience, rotating through a few books helps to keep you reading constantly. When I used to focus on a single book I'd put off reading if I was in an especially dry spot. Being able to pick up another book allows me to avoid the dry section for a while, while also preventing me from doing something less worthwhile like look at my phone.
1. Stop messing about with AI
2. Stop doomscrolling/interacting on social networks (HN is within my 15m allocation)
3. Stop watching _any_ Youtube video that doesn't teach me anything
4. Gloss over my 200 RSS feeds, don't be a completionist
5. Put on classical music, not indie or radio
It almost works. Almost.
I see a few comments about wasting time with AI. I'm curious what the gist of those conversations is about?
I've found AI to be incredibly useful as a tool to nurture intellectual curiosity.
It even improves my book reading experience. Before, when I didn't fully understand a technical detail the author had glossed over, I usually had to skip it, hoping it wasn't critical for understanding later topics. Now, I can get precise explanations for anything I didn't understand in whatever level or detail I require.
in other situations feed it notes, bookmarked articles, generate syllabuses for something you want to learn more about, and generate create html/css "interactive textbooks". the ability to have an infinitely deep tutor always around feels revolutionary.
Back then, whenever I read a book, it felt like I was just moving through the words and lines. Nothing happened in my mind. I had no reaction, no reflection, nothing. Because of that, I avoided learning from books and mostly watched videos instead.
While watching videos, I always read the comments. Reading comments from real people felt different. I reacted to them, reflected on them, and stayed engaged. I think it was because comments are short, simple, and easy to read.
After that, I discovered Reddit, forums, and especially Hacker News. In my opinion, Hacker News is one of the best forums on the internet because it's almost entirely text. Reading those discussions helped me get used to longer and more thoughtful writing.
Over time, my reading improved a lot. I can now read long-form, detailed writing with much better focus and reflection. I still want to improve, but I'm in a much better place than before, when I barely read at all.
Final personal note:
Reading should feel reactive and reflective in your brain. When you read short comments on social media, you can feel the full range of emotions, from happiness to anger to sadness. A good book can create the same experience. It's like highly precise commentary that makes you think, reflect, and react.
I keep notes in a physical notebook but keep it super light. I read mostly fiction so it's usually plot points of each chapter and then when I'm done some quick thoughts. I enjoy this and it satisfies my analytical brain to think about things I really liked that an author did or reappearing structures and so on.
I also enjoy the meta-level of reading. Watching review videos on Youtube, thinking about what to read next and finding "hidden gems", so basically the hobby aspect of it.
Two: I think the internet is shortening everyone's attention span. Reading a whole book helps address that. At least for me, its helping.
Really great advice. Last week I configured my wifi router at home to block youtube entirely. I literally feel like a different person in just a week. I have so much more free time and I am so much less anxious.
> Avoid even audiobooks.
Controversial. I suppose I used to not have an opinion at all on this topic, until I saw an interview with Salman Rushdie after the failed attempt on his life. He said he since the attack, and loosing his right eye, he reads with enormous fonts on an ipad, or yes, he even listens to audio books now.
If audiobooks are good enough for a seven time nominee of the Booker prize, who am I to quibble?
The most important habit, like the author of the blog post says, is looking at a book every time you would look at your phone. Its still not great that we arent really bored anymore, but this is already much better than being on twitter.
This does not sound an improvement over using a phone. We don't have to occupy ourselves every waking moment. It's okay to not do something for a minute.
Not doing anything and being totally idle for a while is nothing to sneeze at. Especially in this day and age.
The strategy for swapping whatever you do on your phone whenever you have 2 free minutes with reading helped my reading a lot, too. I initially swapped scrolling Reddit with short-form reading https://pokerfacowaty.com/blog/reddit-heroin and then swapped that for my ebook reader, reading books and a weekly newspaper. The latter also helps being less angry at news when you're not reading them in the form of rage bait tweets.
As for highlights, I now have hundreds of handwritten ones on my books, no sensible support for it in open source apps is the only thing keeping my Kobo on its stock firmware (unfortunately).
Likely it's a me problem, but I'm mentally so tired that I simply cannot maintain an uninterrupted stream of tasks even if the interstitial spaces are filled with something I enjoy like reading.
I stopped counting, and with a toddler I find bits of time to read about 20 books.
Don’t obsess about reading more. Yeah, get off your phone, but get into books to enjoy them. You don’t remember most of what you read, might as well derive pleasure from it.
One thing that irked me wrong was the part about audiobooks and attention:
> Listening to audio while cooking or cleaning or whatever you do is not the same thing; you are not 100% concentrated on the content. Also, reading is faster than listening, so use your time wisely.
First of all, sometimes you are not concentrating a 100% on something and that is fine. I listen to podcasts while driving, I often miss sentences or longer bits because there’s more traffic that I focus on. That’s fine. I can either go back or accept it.
Second, this is coming from the person that said:
> I read a book when I cook lunch or dinner, and I read a book when eating breakfast.
> I have become good at walking my dog while reading
Edit: formatting
Which is understandable.
I'm a bit surprised that the concept of the Antilibrary makes no appearance, however:
<https://www.themarginalian.org/2015/03/24/umberto-eco-antili...>
I know of people that read books and consome them like food everyday, and wont learn anything thing from them. Their content becoming a distant memory as time passes. What is the point of reading something if you forget it 2 weeks later?
You may read something but the katharsis is still missing. I recommend when reading something. Take your time with it. You dont need to fetish saying you read 500 books in the last 5 years. I read "Gödel, Escher, Bach" and "Negative Dialectics" and it will take many many more months maybe years to full graps them.
I read them from beginning to end but still have so much to learn from them! Disregarding a good book for another might be a grave mistake.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_Books_and_Reading
https://fs.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Arthur-Schopenhau...
<https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Literature/On_Auth...>
This post is irony at a base level.
You ultimately have to sift through a lot of books to get past popular books like Godel, Escher, Bach and on to something like Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience.
For me I don't like audiobooks because its very slow and spoken stories should have a different cadence, velocity, set of dynamics, and diction than a book should (check out "the moth" to see what I'm talking about). I hold nothing against people who don't like to read or people who like audiobooks, or people who like slow things - Suum cuique.
For nonfiction, I think the two mediums are virtually the same depending on the density of the book. Most differences come down to the fact that you’re more susceptible to distraction. Most nonfiction books are light and repetitive enough that I don’t think it’s a big deal
Is this attitude a holdover from encouraging small children to read for themselves? I don't know if this is quite the right framing but are you... hearing-illterate to some degree?
Some voice actors definitely add a layer of interpretation, and some are distractingly bad, but otherwise it could not be any more of an equal experience absorbing a book through my eyes or my ears. Unless there was a need to physically interact with the book, quickly flipping between sections or keeping notes in the margin, which I rarely do.
"I didn't really get the full experience until I read it on the page instead of listening" is an absurd statement to me, but maybe people's brains work differently.
There are things missing from text that can be conveyed over audio or with body language in person certainly so those experiences can't be directly translated from real life to the page.
When I read I build internal voices of the characters or narrators through the pages as a part of my imagination engaging with the words of the book. With audiobooks this never happens.
Many authors are poor readers of their own work.
They are certainly good while you are on a long drive etc, because they entertain you while doing some another task which you wouldn't be able to do while reading. During lockdown, I could not read due to the constant stress and fear mongering, but I had to walk a lot every day and the audiobooks were a good way to accompany that.
I have a measure for all content I consume, quality/hr of reading/listening. If it's just a long video that has 2-3 questions that has caught my attention I'd be listening only those. If it's a long text that I might find something interesting I'll ask the LLM to summarize the main ideas as a filter before I decide to dive in.
Books, and their audiobooks version have on average much more bang per hour than random podcasts, because they're structured, authors had spend more time on them and you can cherry pick from a structure.
I also have caught myself using sloppy content as excuse not working on planned tasks with excuses like "this might be useful", or watching "productivity porn" videos. I think LLMs are good as a pre-filter for that.
Not all narrators are actors, and depending on the narration you may or may not gain from this.
For a good set of examples, I'd recommend Selected Shorts (Symphony Space), which is a set of podcasts and broadcasts voiced by stage and screen actors. They're usually at least good, and often excellent.
<https://symphonyspace.org/selected-shorts>
Recent episodes: <https://www.symphonyspace.org/selected-shorts/episodes>
Two personal all-time faves:
- "The Appropriation of Cultures", by Percival Everett, read by Ruben Santiago Hudson.
- "The Smoker", by David Schickler, read by Robert Sean Leonard: <https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=5XbSI5swx1E>.
Reading does force you to slow down to let more enter your brain.
Audiobooks can do the same in a different way.
Either way, longer form content helps the brain unpack and retain bigger/longer picture things which is the kind of focus that many want to improve.
Reading also helps one be more articulate.
Articulation is a helpful skill in using AI.
My problem has been that once I started doing the audiobooks/podcasts, it has been really hard to reclaim my focus to read. I used to be able to power through books. Now, there always seems to be a distraction at hand.
Audiobooks have been a god send and then the Libby app manna from upon high. Free, high quality, adult-level infotainment?! I'll never go back.
One thing if do is up the reading speed. It takes time but I'm comfortable at 2.6x these days, even on the fragmented sleep a teething toddler grants you. For really in depth stuff I'll slow it down a lot, but a Stephen King dime store novel or John Grisham thriller? Oh yeah, speed it up no worries
As others have pointed out, libraries often have Libby access which can have pretty huge selections of audiobooks. There's a discovery feature that lets you search by vibe, which I am finding useful.
Your point is well taken and very reasonable though.
I actually think this is about quality. Podcasts that take real effort (Hardcore History, Fall of Civilizations, Gastropod) are absolutely worth my time, but they're basically mini-audiobooks in their own right.
----
I disagree with the author of this post. Audiobooks are fantastic in certain settings. e.g. Driving, or any form of transit if you're prone to motion sickness. Yes, listening is different from reading, but you're still getting information into your brain. There are definitely books that don't work as audiobooks (e.g. Anything with equations), but there are also books that are, perhaps, best consumed as audiobooks. Homer was passed down orally for generations before being written down. Anyone who poopoo's an audiobook of Homer deserves to be ridiculed.
Audiobooks completely changed things for me... in the past 2 years, 'read' about 40 books, almost entirely listened to on my daily runs. The prior 2 years? Only 3 or so.
Now it’s at the point where I can’t wait to go for a run or do the dishes because it means I’ll get farther in a great book. Finally a real life hack.
I assume you don't find that; is that because you very rarely feel the need to stop and think, or because it turns out that doing so isn't significantly impeded by having an audiobook playing?
(More generally I'd expect that sort of book to have easier and harder bits and I'd likely want to read them at different speeds. But I could believe that the advantages of doing this are enough to make up for it being harder to do that.)
Disclaimer: I basically never listen to audiobooks, so my guesses at what might or might not work well for me are (1) sheer guesswork and (2) not very interesting except in so far as other people have the same sort of experience I'm guessing I would.
For particularly dense passages I'll just slow down the audio as needed as well.
Even for fiction I find myself starting more slowly as I get to know the characters, and then speeding up as I want to.
first is skimming and context. table of contents, the preclude, intro etc. Then author (interviews, actual work done, other books, friends, enemies) to build a picture of who it is that's talking and what the topic is. 70% books fail this filter.
then the book itself, i usually pick 2 (sometimes 3) books on the topic fed by the research I just did. and i'd build a picture of the main points. skimming through the pages to see what the structure is and what stands out for all books.
now comes the actual reading. i now start reading in chunks. that make me question things, clear out my understanding and the picture of events, groups and people involved in the subject. this is the most time consuming and usually where i lose interest. i make notes in a few index cards or binder leaves or a text file for when I want to revisit.
this format of consumption has proved vastly superior to reading books start to end. I can usually see where the author is biased, pushing agenda or trying to please or oppose some one. and this works amazingly well for old texts (art in 1500s, finance in 1800s, history, programming languages, etc)
Finding the right speed takes some experimentation. Too slow and my mind will wander, too fast and I can't absorb the material / don't have enough time to ponder.
How is this possible?
I tried reading while listening to an audio book and I had to stop after a few books because sometimes I want to re-read a sentence or paragraph or go back to a previous part of the book, and it just messes up my momentum.
I now no longer use audiobook and I just read the book.
I've read 16 books thus far this year.
I still watch movies / tv / YouTube occasionally but I’m much more selective.
As for pausing and rereading, I find a good pair of earbuds helps me do that pretty effortlessly, and I tend to do it often towards the beginning of a book.
another trick recommended by Huberman is wearing a hoodie and reading in front of a blank wall. this will will restrict your visual field and not get distracted by passing cars, light reflections, etc.
i think the biggest "trick" to follow through with reading is the screening process at the outset. ask yourself - why do i want to read this? what do i hope to learn from it/get out of it/etc? am i reading it just because other people are talking about it? answering some of these questions should help you follow through when you 'get stuck' or lose interest, which you can then review the initial reasons why you picked it up in the first place. should also make it easier to put down/ DNF
As for screening I've never consciously asked myself what I wanted to get out of it but I like the idea.
At least for me the effort of scanning, reading, and thinking about the authors perspective and the grind is where the knowledge sinks in for me.
If you're reading along with the audio like OP, then definitely.
But even by itself I think there's a case to be made. Retention for some people (especially those with ADHD can be higher with listening than reading if they listen while doing a low-mental-effort task). If you absorb the material, I think it counts personally.
There are also other less ethical ways that I use, though to compensate I buy the books I really like in physical form.
Of course, I'm just projecting. That's what's happened to me, and I'm miserable about it.
What I don't bother reading anymore is a non-fiction, New York Times bestseller that always has the form of something like "Robustness - The new science of blah blah blah".
There is always a better book on the topic that goes much deeper and that form is the dumb version meant to sell books.
The irony of your getting this advice from an HN comment isn't lost on me, but if you're so concerned about fluff, I'd have thought that comments in the internet would be the first thing you'd rule out because it's so full of noise and non-expert hot takes.
In this way I read more books, which is necessary because ... ah, I almost started discussing why to read more books, that's a different question.
Like if it was something of a sport with olympics where people compete in their own weight and it is measured in the end to the hundredths of seconds in front of spectators in a stadion shaped library cheering READ, READ, READ! Quality is mentioned, remotely, through selection, but still, the mental picture remains the same. The post smells like a training guide from a large gym franchise for readers. It's name is 'Serious Readers!'
Reading multiple books at the same time helps with this. The level of concentration required varies by book and personal experience. I can set aside a larger span of time for more complex books and read more lightweight stories for the rest of the day.
Of course this is not for difficult math textbooks or dense philosophy.
I completely agree with the "mental health" boon to taking time, slowing down and focusing on an activity. This can be done with audiobooks, too. I sometimes sit on my couch and listen to an audiobook, too.
We exist. You won't know because it's solitary. You have to ask, and I doubt you've asked people specifically if they "engage with them" in that way.
I also think it depends on what you are reading. I read for enjoyment using audio books. I read to learn using real books. If you equate the two and assume someone using audio books is using them for non-fiction to learn something, I really think you are out of touch.
There are podcasts which are just free-association rambling (or worse), others which are very closely scripted and edited.
I very much prefer the latter, and the best of those approach books in structure and/or value, if they don't directly produce books themselves (e.g., Peter Adamson's History of Philosophy, which is both a podcast and a book series).
Second, you’re getting a more compressed and lossy form of that information from an LLM, unless you go to such efforts that it’s be easier to just read the book. It’s akin to a conversation where a friend asks you about a book in finer and finer detail until you either recite the book for them word for word or direct them to just go read the book.
So, I don’t think LLMs are replacements for reading books. They’re complimentary.
The best audiobook I’ve ever listened to is Stephen Kings On Writing: A memoir of the Craft, read by the author. One of our times best storytellers, both when it comes to writing them and telling them.
Naturally, I also added the ability to highlight, leave notes and ... ask questions (via API)
Even with incredible models, it's a decent amount of work to get this to work nicely
I for one can't enjoy a piece of creative media made by AI because I know it only exists so that a handful of losers can profit off the wholesale theft of actual human creativity. Other people don't share these qualms (they are also losers) and that's their choice. Honestly, I could give a fuck if AI tanks coding because I think the internet as we now know it is a mistake of capitalism and if using the plagiarism machine causes codebase maintenance to be harder, aww shucks sucks to suck, guess that's your job now? IDK, I'm married to an artist/writer and was a cook for most of my 20s so I have become a neo-luddite in my middle age when it comes to this specific topic.
Weird how "where you are in the world" affects your view of things, right?
Listening to an audiobook is not the same as reading a book.
The whole point of the article was how to read more books, not how to have someone read books to you.
If you like reading paper books, good. If you like reading electronic books, good. If you like listening to audiobooks, good. If you like having your partner lovingly transcribe a book into individual postcards and mail them to you weekly, good. Consume the book however you want and don’t judge others by their preference.
Audiobooks are someone else's (i.e. not your) interpretation of a work. Kind of like how you might go watch a play or a movie instead of reading a script. There's nothing wrong with either of those things, but they're not reading.
Example: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247504935_They_Hear...
Token prediction machines do not produce meaningful output.
It is much more likely that they will regurgitate, without attribution, something meaningful that a human wrote (in their plagiarism/training data).
Meaningful "output" is only meaningful if the author understood the meaning, instead of predicting words in sequence.
- AntennaPod (Android: https://antennapod.org/about/) doesn't specifically block ads, but does make skipping them fairly painless. I'm not familiar with the iOS app space.
- Seek out, and add a classification tag for ad-free podcasts. When you're not in the mood for dealing with ads, play these.
- Protip: if you learn, or want to learn, German, Deutschlandfunk (and a number of other German-language broadcasters) have a set of excellent, ad-free, podcasts. This includes a number of podcasts for learning German (generally through the Goethe Institute or Deutsche Welle).
- If your podcast app permits it, set your forward-skip to 30 or 60 seconds (the length of most ad beds), and backwards to 5 seconds. You'll be able to navigate past most ad blocks more easily. You can also set begin/end skip periods for start/end of episode advertising.
- I've thought of manually editing episodes from a desktop session using audio editing software (Audacity or similar). That's ... a bit of additional overhead, but as with other mise en place techniques, you incur the overhead once and don't have to worry about the interruptions when you're in the middle of listening to an episode. Audacity shows sound signatures and I'm expecting that most ad blocks will be readily apparent. I also suspect AI tools might be able to remove ads fairly reliably, though haven't looked into this yet.
I've definitely noticed that I deliberately avoid listening to podcasts which have ads when I don't have the bandwidth / freedom to deal with them (e.g., doing other tasks, walking etc.). And advertising has become more pervasive, longer, more intrusively inserted, and annoying with time.
Other ad-free English-language pods: Tech Can't Save Us, History of Philosophy (Without Any Gaps), and Philosophy Bites (and several affiliated podcasts). All are highly informative, well-produced, don't fixate on current events and politics (which ... I find maddening). And several of those would appreciate any support as well.
Other national English-language broadcasters (NPR, PBS, CBC, ABC (Australia), etc.) have podcast channels, but most have succumbed to advertising. That isn't to say they don't have good programming, but don't expect ad-free listening. For a number of cultural reasons, Germany seems to have incorporated the idea that advertising itself has deep costs and its avoidance strong benefits.
Scott Adams' podcasts were different. He inserted very few commericials, and they were short enough there was no reason to skip forward. I tried many other podcasts after he passed away, and they all were largely long, boring commercials. Yuck. I now listen to Pandora or Soma FM instead.
Fortunately this can be done much more easily now, with headphone-based controls and smartwatch-based controls. It takes maybe 1-3 seconds for me to get through an ad break and be back to listening.
Millions of people read for entertainment. If you ask the people who read Fifty Shades and other erotic novels¹, how many do you think would say they do it “to learn and retain”? In fact, not retaining is something I would like to do with certain pieces of media, so I could reexperience their impact.
Have you ever listened to a good audiobook for a fictional story? There are fantastic versions of Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett stories where the voice acting really brings them to life in a way many readers cannot with their internal voice (see, for example, aphantasia). How about a book written by a comedian, read by the author? Having them read the funny bits with the intended delivery and in their own voice feels like you’re enjoying another of their stand-ups. They sometimes even go slightly off-script and make jokes not in the written book. Again: Consume books however you like and let others do the same. Why does it concern you how other people enjoy their books?
¹ No judgement. Smut is a big market and you do you as long as you’re not hurting anyone else.
For one thing, in the written version, it's way easier to scan backwards precisely to a point in the text to clarify missed details.
Sometimes I like to stop reading for a moment and take in the scenery. With an audiobook, the narrator has already decided to blurt out the next line. Or I'd have to quickly pause it and lose my train of thought. With reading I'm fully in control of when the next bit of information will be introduced.
Audiobooks are great for dialog-heavy stories, but sometimes I want to spend a little bit longer on a particular page when the author is building imagery... what's the equivalent of that in an audiobook, slowing the speech down? Except it's not about speed, it's about soaking in the particular meaning of a word (or string of words) before going onto the next.
I don't think this even scratches the surface of how different they are as mediums of storytelling.
The study has issues but at least the hypothesis of representing information independent of the modality you consumed it in seems like a decent default to me.
This isn't a perfect comparison (since I believe there may be some underlying mechanical difference), but it's like how it's possible to get your nutritional needs met with liquid nutrition or eating whole foods. They have the same end result nutritionally, but some people find liquid nutrition to be horrible.
I think it's especially the case for harder-to-read books that I prefer the textual version. Some books are highly referential. They may take place in a country I'm not familiar with. Take The Stranger by Camus. I have never been to Algiers (or Algeria for that matter), so I want to get a feel for the beach in Algiers. Sometimes the author will refer to a flower I've never heard of, so I will look it up. Stuff like this is important to me for experiencing the story, but for others, it's not important. They use context clues to determine "it's a flower" and just fill in whatever flower they feel like putting there.
I love books and audiobooks and I experience absolutely no difference between the two but that is contingent on liking the voice actor's voice.
This year I have really moved to listening to all books read by the synthetic af_heart model. I love that voice so much. #1 Robertson Dean, #2 af_heart.
With stories, probably. With nonstories, and depending on what kind of nonstory book, I might jump around a lot. I might like to skim quickly (e.g. chapters/sections, starting sentences of every few paragraphs, etc.), then skim more thoroughly (e.g. recheck paragraphs of a chapter to get a general flow of it and how they connect, etc.), then read thoroughly on some sections and less others. You just can't do that with audiobooks. You don't have the same level of control.
Depending on how thought-provoking something is, my mind may stray on thinking of implications. Then, it's easier for my eyes to dart back by the time I notice and reread x or y, than rewinding, listening a little bit, rewind some more, etc. I might just stare at some words sometimes. You can't stare at sound.
Memory in relation to sight and sound is probably different, too. With sight you can kind of make more associations. You read an idea, and you can associate that with the location of where you're reading it (what part of the page, around how many pages have been turned in the chapter, what chapter, thickness of pages on left and right side of the spine). With sound, it's just a single stream. You're not staring at the timestamp location in the file of everything you're hearing and there isn't like this hierarchical location structure.
Why are you compelled to defend that (in my view) meaningless distinction? Why does it matter? I’m asking genuinely, so I can understand why we’re having this conversation.
Just because a brain is made from organic material rather than silicon, doesn't make it less of a prediction machine.
The brain understands concepts. I can say, for example, "a penny saved is a penny earned" and understand that I'm talking about money and savings in general. I've felt the satisfaction of a full bank account and the panic of a near-empty one.
The AI knows that someone once wrote the words "a penny saved is a penny earned" in that order. It has ingested volumes of wise sayings and economic texts to facilitate the statistically accurate words which will follow previous words in the conversation.
AI is doing a lot more than just regurgitating facts. It can take abstract concepts and apply them reasonably well in novel scenarios.
To make things more concrete, how about you name a specific concept that you believe a frontier model can't grasp?
If AI was learning and understanding, this would have been solved in 2024. As it is, it's just predicting words that are likely to answer the question.
You're slurping up the excrement of corporations if you think AI is "learning" from reading others' experiences. All it is learning - all it can learn - is what words are likely to appear one after another, with no semantic understanding.
Second of all, not being able to properly spell a word doesn't mean one doesn't have a semantic understanding of the concepts the word represent. Do you think an illiterate person is incapable of intelligence?